The Review Revolution: Improving Culture through Kvetching

A Review of THE SECRET HOLOCAUST DIARIES

Sometimes, the story of a memoir’s publication is almost as interesting as the life it recounts.  Russian immigrant Nonna Bannister (1926-2004) lived happily with her American husband for decades before finally telling him about her sufferings during the Holocaust, where she was a forced laborer for the Germans.  Throughout the war she carried with her a pillow in which she had sewn her photographs, documents, and the diary she kept in several different languages. Now, more than six decades later, the diary is finally available to the public, and it’s one of those books that just about everyone should read.

The first chapters of the memoir depict an idyllic-sounding childhood in Russia and Ukraine.  Born into a privileged family in 1926, Nonna heard stories of how her Cossack grandfather had been butchered by the Bolsheviks, and how her grandmother had saved the family by fleeing to another part of the country.  As a child in an increasingly repressive Stalinist state, Nonna suffered somewhat because her father was Polish, but for the most part escaped the brutality around her. Nonna had a magical childhood with loving parents, family servants (rare for the period), interesting family friends (including the Solzhenitsyns), and a formidable but doting babushka who had the whole extended family in for summer and winter holidays at a 37-room country house. She steeped the grandchildren in the liturgies of the Orthodox Church long after it was safe to do so.  This was a religious heritage that Nonna would cling to during the cruel years to come.

After war broke out in 1939, everything was in chaos for the family.  In an effort to protect Nonna’s older brother, her parents sent him away to school—a separation that turned out to be permanent, as he was never heard from again.  Other relatives fled to stay ahead of the Germans, also with tragic results.  Because of this, Nonna’s parents made the decision to stay put and try to live out the Nazi occupation of Russia and Ukraine.  I won’t give all the details away (though the chapter titles do), but this also turned out to be a disastrous decision, and through a variety of events Nonna and her mother were transported to Germany to serve in labor camps.  Two unforgettable scenes involve events that occurred on the train into Germany.  In the second, Nonna barely escaped with her life, and the horror of the mass execution she witnessed will remain with the reader long after closing the book.

This is not a perfect memoir.  There are too many Editor’s Notes, which give the diaries a jerky feel and distract from the story.  But readers will come away with a profound admiration for Nonna’s indomitable will to survive and her determination to forgive and to find the good in humanity. 

Snark Alert: A Review of MOMMYWOOD by Tori Spelling

From the opening pages of Tori Spelling's searing new memoir, Mommywood, readers will realize that we are in for a rare tale of pathos and depth.  In that first scene, Spelling recounts the devastation and fear she experienced when, at a 3-D ultrasound for her first child, she realized that his nose looked too big.  Gigantic, even.  She could not believe that this horrifying defect, which could well destroy Liam's Hollywood career before it even began, went unnoticed by her husband and doctor.

Spelling knew it was vital that baby Liam have a perfect nose, because she had made the noble decision to record his every smile, poopy diaper, temper tantrum, and birthday bash for all of America--no, the whole world--to see. On her reality show Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, which airs weekly on the Oxygen network, Spelling vents to fans about the tribulations of having two tiny children who are followed everywhere by the paparazzi she  invited into their home. 

In the book, she reveals her fascinating quest to lose the baby weight from Liam even while getting pregnant with her daughter Stella.  She courageously opens up about her sex life. She trashes her mother's catty trashing of her and discusses Mom's shopping and wanton materialism. She reveals how, after redecorating their home, she realized it was far too small and bought a mansion instead.  She frets at length about the faux pas of arriving at a birthday party for celebrity twins with the wrong present because she had never actually met the children and didn't know their ages.  She also wonders aloud why it is that Luke Perry, her old co-star on 90210, snubbed her at another child's birthday party, finally concluding that it may have something to do with what she said about Perry in her last memoir, sTORI Telling.  (Although it was only published a year ago, there obviously needed to be another memoir for 2009, because a lot has happened in Tori Spelling's life.  It would have been a tragedy had we not been told, for example, what Halloween costumes she chose to dress the kids in for 2008.)

Tune in next week, when we'll be reviewing The Secret Holocaust Diaries, Nonna Bannister's whiny and self-absorbed memoir of the atroctities she and her family suffered under Hitler and Stalin.  So Bannister thinks that losing her whole family was tough?  Please.  She clearly had no idea of the magnitude of human suffering, unlike Spelling.  Why, Bannister probably didn't even wear Prada in the camps. Why would anyone want to read that frivolous fluff?

Green is the New Black: A Review of Hot, Flat, and Crowded

I'm late to the Thomas Friedman bandwagon, but it's never too late to save the planet.  Actually, it might be.  That's one of the most important messages of Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman's environmental manifesto.  The first half lays out the problem, and suffice it to say that we're in deep caca on every imaginable front.  It's not just global warming--or "global weirding," as Friedman describes extreme climate change--it's diminishing biodiversity, swelling global populations, shrinking access to clean water, and a whole host of other nasty things.  The sum total of all this is that the world is becoming hot (global warming), flat (with globalization and new technologies leveling the economic playing field), and crowded--our planet now supports about 6.5 billion people and that is expected to grow to 9.2 billion in 2050. 

To prove all this, Friedman takes one of those enviable but surely exhausting journeys around the world, traveling to India, Indonesia, Iraq, Bahrain, China, Russia, and elsewhere.  One of the most interesting portions of the book deals with "petropolitics," Friedman's term for the ways in which oil, power, freedom, and ecology interact. For example,he argues that predominately Muslim nations are not at all the same in how they treat women, encourage or discourage democracy, or pursue scientific progress.  The differences don't have to do with varying interpretations of shariah law so much as they reflect the presence or absence of oil: when oil is present and nations are rich, petrodespots take control and crush the opposition.  And this isn't only true of Muslim nations; he also points to Russia and Venezuela as countries where there is a pattern of inverse relationships between oil and freedom.  When oil was $20 a barrel, Russia was the most democratic it's ever been.  Whenever it is oil-rich, the government behaves as though its people are an expendable commodity.

There are many environmental books that tell us how we peons, in our small way, can help save the planet by turning off lights, taking showers instead of baths, toting canvas bags, and driving Prii.  This is not that book.  In fact, Friedman rather snarkily mocks books with titles like 1001 Little Ways to Save Our Planet because he says that all of these mini-efforts, rather than adding up to equal a profound social change, simply cannot replace the leadership of good government.  A grassroots approach is certainly green, but not green enough.

We have to innovate our way out of this problem, and this is where the book gets truly depressing.  Friedman points out that America hasn't had any large-scale progress in new energy sources in about 50 years, and that our government's refusal to take the lead in ecological matters has not only endangered our planet (duh) but also our economy (admittedly less obvious).  In a fascinating and ultimately persuasive argument, he looks to our government's refusal to cultivate other energy sources as a backhanded way of undermining our own efforts in this decade's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  By refusing to tax gasoline after 9/11, our government simultaneously undermined the development of green cars AND put billions of dollars in the hands of the same Saudi lords who sponsor Al-Qaeda. Oy vey.

I found the book to be compelling and generally well-executed, but incomplete.  The second half, which argues that America will only regain its position as a world leader if we step up to out-green the rest of the world, is not as well developed as the first.  So I felt great interest when I learned that Friedman is writing a new chapter to the book based on reader ideas--all to the end of encouraging environmental innovation and breakthrough developments that will drastically reduce America's dependence on foreign oil while also repairing the ecological balance we and other nations have so carelessly damaged.

This is not a perfect book,and it's clear that Friedman has an agenda.  Written in the waning days of the Bush administration, it shows considerable disdain for our former president, so much so that I worry that the very people who ought to read the book will refuse to because of its obvious partisanship.  It also has no endnotes, which is a problem for anyone who wants to learn more or follow up on some of Friedman's cited statistics.  Still, it breaks new ground in its big-picture connections between politics, the environment, and technological innovation.  Four stars.

The Chick Lit Break-Up Memoir: Reviews of "Happens Every Day" and "I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti"

Giulia, meet Isabel. I am delighted to make this introduction, because having listened to both of you first-time writers read your memoirs on audio, I can confidently predict that you will be great friends. You are both New Yorkers, you are both around 40, you both have a great sense of humor, you both like to cook, and you have both come out on the other side of being dumped by shitwits. 

Giulia, Isabel Gillies is that Tea Leoni-like actress you’ve seen from time to time playing the detective’s wife on Law & Order: SVU.  Now you’re seeing her memoir Happens Every Day plugged as the Read du Jour at every Starbucks in America, so pick it up the next time you are grabbing a latte in your Park Slope hood.  In the book, Isabel tells the story of her marriage to an Oberlin College professor, with whom she was desperately in love and who fathered her two little sons. She had thrown herself into small-town college life, teaching as an adjunct in the theater department, working at a farmer’s market, and renovating an old brick house near campus.  What’s especially interesting about the story is how quickly her fairy-tale marriage seemed to unravel; after having what she termed “the summer of love” at her family’s place in Maine, her husband began to withdraw from her and the children, and had all but left the marriage by Thanksgiving.  (Although he swore up and down that all the time he was spending with a young female colleague was strictly professional, and accused Isabel repeatedly of paranoia, he and the colleague are now married, so apparently Isabel was on to something. Did I mention that this woman was one of her close friends?!) 

Giulia, I can tell from your own book that you are an avid reader, and you probably know that there are two different kinds of good memoirs: the ones that stand out because the writing is exceptional, and the ones that stand out because of the author’s candor and raw emotion.  This one belongs in the latter category.  Isabel is not a writer’s writer, but she is intimate and girlfriendy, dishing on the everyday and the sublime with equal humor.  She does come across as neurotic and slightly inappropriate, with a tendency to overshare—but it’s a memoir, right?  Although she changes the names of the people involved, Oberlin is a small campus, and it takes a 45-second Google search to ID the lone hot poetry professor in its English department, his fashionable new wife, and their bookish friends.  (Yes, of course I Googled them all.  You would have cyberstalked them too; it’s a very interesting break-up story.)

Isabel, now it’s your turn. I figure you are in the market for loyal, strong female friends now that you have moved back to NYC to reclaim your life post-divorce. Allow me to introduce Giulia Melucci.   Giulia can tell you a thing or two about relationship disasters and men.  She’s dated them all, and in her funny tell-all, I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, she describes them with little mercy and much satire.  Actually, I should clarify that she hasn’t dated every man, she’s dated the same man every time: he must be commitment-phobic, immature, slightly artsy/creative, and either poor or a cheapskate.  Responsible, caring men with stable jobs need not apply.  (Hey, Isabel, you might be judgmental about this, as you confess you often are, but you had a man who seemed to be caring and stable, and look how that turned out.) 

Giulia is intelligent, funny, and perceptive about people (except, of course, when it comes to boyfriends).  She’s also a fantastic cook, and the memoir is full of the recipes she cooked for various doomed relationships and occasions.  For example, when making morning-after pancake batter, she advises not overmixing, because really, Mitch isn’t worth the trouble.  Most of the recipes draw from Giulia’s Italian-American heritage: gnocchi, lasagna, pesto, and the like.  This is not a book to read when you are hungry, but the recipes sound delicious.

FYI, Giulia had a really painful breakup this last time—a Scottish writer who mooched off her generosity (and her cooking) for months on end and then left after she helped him secure a six-figure advance for his quixotic novel.  This is the only section of the memoir that still sounds bitter, possibly because the pain is still so fresh, or possibly because Mr. Scot both broke her heart and used her professionally.  Yet at the end, you get the sense that Giulia’s going to be fine on her own, and is not bridgetjonesin’ for a new boyfriend.

Well, both of you got some relationship payback, I think.  Congratulations on your engaging memoirs.  Toast each other with a bottle of the white wine you both like to drink and enjoy the fact that two strong, witty, smart women are surviving just fine.

What Does "The Shack" Teach Us About God?

This spring I finally succumbed to all of the hype and read William P. Young's bestselling novel The Shack.  All I knew about it was that it had been self-published, had gathered significant steam, and then found a major publisher and mainstream status.  It's an unusual story -- all self-published authors think they can get that kind of major play, but almost none really can (see prior post on self-publishing).  It's as if Cinderella were a book.  

I had also heard that the theology of the novel has been controversial, and has been received very poorly by some conservative Christians. Apparently the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary devoted most of a radio show to denouncing the book and pointing out its many heresies.  And of course, that succeeded beautifully in driving attention to the book and making it a focal point for discussion among evangelicals.  (You know that old cliche about even bad publicity being good publicity?  It's actually true.)

Being in possession of what might be termed a rebellious streak, I've never been one to allow  Southern Baptists to tell me what to read, unless you count Jimmy Carter.  So I eventually dug out the copy I was given last year and began to read.  The first fifty pages were quite disappointing.  As an editor, I found it difficult to get past the many flaws with Young's writing, which I won't enumerate here, but let's just say that another old chestnut--show, don't tell--has become a cliche because it is also true.  The book's vocabulary is anemic, its deep narration infrequent, its dialogue overdone.  Okay, I guess I couldn't help enumerating the problems after all.  So sue me.

Still, I got in the groove.  From a postmodern theological standpoint, The Shack is truly interesting and even profound. As you may know, it deals with the age-old theodicy question: why does a good God allow horrible things to happen to basically good people?  In the story, a middle-aged man named Mack, who is trying to recover from the brutal murder of his daughter Missy, confronts God and his own deepest pain in a run-down shack in the woods.  Over the course of a weekend, God appears to Mack in multiple guises and imparts many lessons about divine love.

I wound up writing a study guide to the novel for TheThoughtfulChristian.com.  It's tough to highlight the most important issues in a 2,700-word study guide, and I've already gotten a couple of letters from readers who were disappointed about specific theological points I did not have room to discuss.  Still, I hope it is a helpful introduction to what the novel has to say about the weeping God, the Trinity, the problem of human suffering, and the hope of heaven.  Here are few tidbits from the study (which I'm afraid costs $4.95 to download, so I can't post the whole thing up here or they'll get mad at me):

"What Mack needs is not rote religion, but a life-changing experience of God.  In The Shack, God is described in the same way that theologian Paul Tillich referred to him—as the “ground of all being” who is in all, through all, and uniquely real.  (p. 112) Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu take great pains to teach Mack the difference between religion and love.  Religion is based on hierarchy and rules, which Mack learns 'cannot bring freedom; they only have the power to accuse.' (p. 203) Papa explains that the Bible isn’t a rulebook but a 'picture of Jesus,' and that ritual is dead if it exists merely for its own sake.  (pp. 197 and 207)  The three don’t want Mack to be a rule-follower; they want to permeate every nook and cranny of his soul."

I was impressed by the expansive view of the Trinity that the novel proclaims, and of course by its use of feminine as well as masculine imagery for God: 

"Papa chooses to reveal Godself to Mack first in the form of a woman for the very personal and loving reason that Mack, a survivor of childhood abuse at the hands of his father, might have strong suspicions of a male deity.  In her appearance as a 'beaming' African-American woman, Papa represents what some black Womanist theologians have labeled 'kitchen table theology.'  Papa bakes a pie and wipes a tear; Papa sings along with the radio in the kitchen; Papa conjures pancakes and fried potatoes and collard greens.  God’s love becomes manifest in these acts of caring, as God serves up the wisdom of the ages alongside melt-in-your-mouth scones."

I was surprised and a little bit humbled by The Shack.  If the writing does not bother you, dig into the theology.  It may surprise you too.

Two Guides to Self-Publishing: THE WELL-FED SELF-PUBLISHER and THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING

Most people in the publishing industry like to think that they can smell a self-published book a mile away.  It’s the one with the amateurish cover, first of all (and although the old adage says you can’t judge a book by its cover, people do it all the time, which is why cover design is the single most important factor in book sales).  The self-published book is also usually the one with a topic that absolutely nobody cares about. 

Peter Bowerman’s first book, The Well-Fed Writer, proved me wrong.  I was actually well into reading that book before I discovered that it had been self-published.  Since I was an editor at Publishers Weekly at the time, I was well-schooled in what a self-published book felt like because hundreds, if not thousands, had crossed my desk during those nine years in search of a review.  (Which they almost never got, BTW.)  Unlike the vast majority of self-published books, Bowerman’s was completely professional.  It looked sharp, was consistently interesting, and was chock-full of information all freelance writers could use.  I put many of his tips into practice in my own sideline freelance business, with good effect. 

Now he shares the secrets not just of his success as a writer, but as a self-publisher.  In The Well-Fed Self-Publisher, Bowerman walks authors through every stage of the self-publishing process, with a particular eye to guerrilla marketing and publicity, which takes up almost two-thirds of the book.  This kind of viral, non-traditional marketing is something that other established guides don’t cover quite as well.  The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross, for instance, focuses more on traditional outlets for book publicity, but the reality is that many of these avenues are often effectively closed to the self-published author. However, the Rosses’ book is much better on the nuts-and-bolts of the actual publishing process, from getting an ISBN to creating an index—details that Bowerman typically outsourced and encourages others to outsource as well.  I think any readers who are serious about self-publishing, especially if they have more of a DIY vibe, should get both these helpful how-to guides. The Rosses’ book feels like a venerable grand dame, now in her fourth edition, while Bowerman’s is like her yappy but oddly effective terrier.

Bowerman says he did hire an editor for this project, and for the most part, the writing quality is very serviceable.  He adores exclamation points, perhaps too much, and there are a few typos here and there.  Sentence fragments abound.  But if such tics don’t bother you, the information is well worth it.  I’d love to see an updated edition with more information on how self-publishers can leverage Amazon more effectively; there are great tips on this in Sell Your Book on Amazon (also self-published).

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Who says the epistolary novel is dead?  Although the letter format is old-fashioned, it absolutely works in this charming story, and I expect we'll see a revival of this eighteenth-century genre in the future.  (Please, no emails.  Not emails.)

Think of this novel as Reading Lolita in Tehran meets Island at War, seasoned by a healthy dose of 84 Charing Cross Road. The story, co-written by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece Annie Barrows, takes place in 1946, as feisty thirty-something London author Juliet Ashton is picking up the pieces of her life after World War II.  Casting about for a subject for an article which morphs into her next book, she begins to correspond with several members of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society," an ad hoc book club formed in the Channel Islands during the five long years of German occupation.

As they write to Juliet,the society members reveal both the hilarity and the horror of the war.  Juliet decides she can't get the full story unless she travels to Guernsey to interview these survivors, and of course falls in love with the people and the place and stays far longer than she intends.  There is a bit of a love triangle between Juliet, a London rake, and a shy but proud Guernsey farmer named Mr. Darcy Dawsey.  Sound familiar? But Jane Austen is not the only great writer whose work is honored here: Charles Lamb, Seneca, Oscar Wilde, Marcus Aurelius, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Bronte sisters, and others pop up like old friends.  If there is a theme to this story, it's that great books--and good friends--can get you through anything.  As one character says, "We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us." 

Not only did I love this novel; it gave me Reader Rabbit trails to follow for months. It's chock full of enough literary recommendations for other novels, essays, and stories to keep bibliophiles busy.  This is precisely what Juliet loves about reading: "...one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book.  It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment." 

Not Bad for a "Mormon Housewife": LDS Themes in TWILIGHT and THE HOST

Friends, I owe you all an apology for not posting in -- ack -- nearly five months.  A variety of personal vicissitudes, as well as work, have kept me preoccupied.  Then there's the other reason -- I actually forgot my password and user name for Typepad.  Really.  When Typepad revamped its interface a few months back, it lost all my "remember me" information.  And I sure as heck didn't remember it; that's why God made cookies, right?  Right.  So . . . it's taken me a while to blog again.  Plus I discovered Facebook and got out of the blogging rhythm.

 My last post was about Twilight, so I guess it's fitting to resume there.  Last week I spoke in Utah about Mormon themes in Stephenie Meyer's fiction.  You can read a great summary of the presentation in the online version of the Deseret News here.  (Thanks, Mormon Times!)  Or, if you're interested in reading the whole paper, it will be published in BYU Studies in some future issue, so I'll be sure to post a link.  Here are the opening grafs: